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Suzabelle Rising

June 22, 2015 by Zero Point

When the Zero Point Team sat down last year to begin planning our 2015 marketing approach Perry gave the team a few key starting points. He wanted to somehow honor those who’s incredible talents and sacrifices were acute in the culmination of EOD technologies as we know them today, and in essence made it possible for Zero Point to exist as the preeminent provider of EOD/C-IED products and services. And of course, in true Zero Point fashion, it needed to be presented in a big way. For those who know Zero Point, you know we don’t go half way on anything. With that bit of direction we began looking at key individuals and events throughout EOD history and as usual we decided the place to start was at the beginning, with Admiral Kauffman. From there we began to dig into his career which revealed his many exploits including the story of “Suzabelle”, the name given to the first unexploded Japanese bomb defused and dismantled for its intelligence by Admiral Kauffman following the attack on Pearl Harbor. At that point we knew our focus was going to be on Admiral Kauffman and our display was going to have a WWII look and feel. But now what? We began looking at how best to represent the expansive transition of technology innovation over the last 75 years and decided it would be cool to bring together the technologies of yesterday and today. The side by side showcasing of a SCR-625 mine detector and a state-of-the-art Pointman mounted TiTAN Disruptor System would go a long way in showing just how far the community has come.. Months of planning and preparing ensued with the prepping Zero Point’s latest innovations and hot off the IR&D line products along with lots of WWII era gear to round out our trade show presentation. At a certain point we took a step back and looked at it all and realized, something was missing. But what? We had a great display of Zero Point’s sweet product line and lots of new gear combined with some really cool WWII stuff you just can’t find anymore. Looking at the size of our booth for SOFIC it was clear there was some big space to fill, and then it hit us. We needed a WWII bomber; it was only logical, we had a WWII theme and a WWII pin-up-girl. We absolutely needed to commission a B-17 with our Suzabelle nose art. Reminder, I did mention earlier that Zero Point never goes half way and I assure you, if we could have found a way to fit the front end of a B-17 into our SOFIC booth (#1818 by the way) we would have. We thought about it, and we thought about it hard, but eventually we landed on an even cooler idea. The Unimog. See, Zero Point picked up an old 1970’s Unimog years ago (long story, different blog) and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to prep it for show time; and who doesn’t love a kitted-out Unimog? The cool factor peaked and we knew we had our center piece. After months of design, overhaul and a slick WWII-esq wrap sporting the beautiful Suzabelle, we had our B-17. And we can’t wait to show her off.

So now it’s show time. Catalogs printed, pallets shipped and Suzabelle on a trailer headed south. Zero Point is excited to kick off our 2015 show season and the opportunity to showcase our newest innovations but even more importantly we are excited to pay homage to those who risked it all to provide us the opportunity to do what we do. God Bless America and see you at the show.